Skylight Books Podcast Series

The Steady Running of the Hour (Simon & Schuster) In this mesmerizing debut, a young American discovers he may be heir to the unclaimed estate of an English World War I officer, which launches him on a quest across Europe to uncover the elusive truth. Just after graduating college, Tristan Campbell receives a letter delivered by special courier to his apartment in San Francisco. It contains the phone number of a Mr. J.F. Prichard of Twyning & Hooper, Solicitors, in London--and news that could change Tristan's life forever. In 1924, Prichard explains, an English alpinist named Ashley Walsingham died attempting to summit Mt. Everest, leaving his fortune to his former lover, Imogen Soames-Andersson. But the estate was never claimed. Information has recently surfaced suggesting Tristan may be the rightful heir, but unless he can find documented evidence, the fortune will be divided among charitable beneficiaries in less than two months. In a breathless race from London archives to Somme battlefields to the Eastfjords of Iceland, Tristan pieces together the story of a forbidden affair set against the tumult of the First World War and the pioneer British expeditions to Mt. Everest. Following his instincts through a maze of frenzied research, Tristan soon becomes obsessed with the tragic lovers, and he crosses paths with a mysterious French girl named Mireille who suggests there is more to his quest than he realizes. Tristan must prove that he is related to Imogen to inherit Ashley's fortune--but the more he learns about the couple, the stranger his journey becomes. The Steady Running of the Hour announces the arrival of a stunningly talented author. Part love story, part historical tour de force, Justin Go's novel is utterly compelling, unpredictable, and heartrending.  Praise for The Steady Running of the Hour "A wonderful time-slip story, beautifully written with a superb sense of place. Go captures the spirit of early 20th-century England perfectly, both in the past and the present, in a novel that is exciting, emotionally engaging and ambitious. I loved it!"--Kate Mosse "Justin Go has written an astonishingly vast, meticulously plotted, and beautifully told novel. In elegant, haunting prose he tells a wartime story that is at once violent and lovely, hopeful and despairing. I won't soon forget Go's passionate, star-crossed lovers and their deeply moving story, set against the riveting, utterly realistic backdrop of the Great War."--Anton DiSclafani Justin Go was born in Los Angeles and studied at the University of California, Berkeley and University College London. He has lived in Paris, London, New York City and Berlin, among other places. The Steady Running of the Hour is his first novel and is being translated into more than eighteen languages. 

Thirty Girls (Knopf Publishing) Skylight Books' is proud to present award-winnig novelist Susan Minot, and her first novel in over ten years. The long-awaited novel from the best-selling, award-winning author of Evening is a literary tour de force set in war-torn Africa. Esther is a Ugandan teenager abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army and forced to witness and commit unspeakable atrocities, who is struggling to survive, to escape, and to find a way to live with what she has seen and done. Jane is an American journalist who has traveled to Africa, hoping to give a voice to children like Esther and to find her center after a series of failed relationships. In unflinching prose, Minot interweaves their stories, giving us razor-sharp portraits of two extraordinary young women confronting displacement, heartbreak, and the struggle to wrest meaning from events that test them both in unimaginable ways. With mesmerizing emotional intensity and stunning evocations of Africa's beauty and its horror, Susan Minot gives us her most brilliant and ambitious novel yet. Susan Minot is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, poet, and screenwriter. Her first novel, Monkeys, was published in a dozen countries and won the Prix Femina Étranger in France. Her novel Evening was a worldwide best seller and became a major motion picture. She received her MFA from Columbia University and lives with her daughter in New York City and on an island off the coast of Maine.

The Harlem Hellfighters (Broadway Books) From bestselling author Max Brooks, the riveting story of the highly decorated, barrier-breaking, historic black regiment--the Harlem Hellfighters The Harlem Hellfighters is a fictionalized account of the 369th Infantry Regiment--the first African American regiment mustered to fight in World War I. From the enlistment lines in Harlem to the training camp at Spartanburg, South Carolina, to the trenches in France, bestselling author Max Brooks tells the thrilling story of the heroic journey that these soldiers undertook for a chance to fight for America. Despite extraordinary struggles and discrimination, the 369th became one of the most successful--and least celebrated--regiments of the war. The Harlem Hellfighters, as their enemies named them, spent longer than any other American unit in combat and displayed extraordinary valor on the battlefield. Based on true events and featuring artwork from acclaimed illustrator Caanan White, these pages deliver an action-packed and powerful story of courage, honor, and heart.

Bark: Stories (Knopf) We're thrilled to present acclaimed writer Lorrie Moore (A Gate at the Stairs, Birds of America), who will visit Skylight to read and sign her new short story collection, Bark.

Come celebrate National Poetry Month with readings from Kim Dower, Yvonne M. Estrada, Dylan Cameron Gailey, Brett Guitar Hofer, Eric Howard, Kay Sundstrom, Sharon Venezio, Tina Yang, Helen Yeoman and Terry Wolverton for an explosion of forms and styles, moods and revelations.

Goldilocks Zone (University of New Mexico Press) Goldilocks Zone explores the inventions of bridges, condoms, fireworks, and glass weaved into the stories of creative people teetering on the brink of disaster. But those lives are also immersed in light, love, joy, and madness, all the elements of a rich and wild inventive life. Dr. Kate Gale is managing editor of Red Hen Press, editor of the Los Angeles Review, and president of the American Composers Forum, LA. She teaches in the Low Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska in Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction. She is author of five books of poetry, a novel, and Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis. Her most recent projects include a co-written libretto, Paradises Lost with Ursula K. LeGuin and composer Stephen Taylor, and a libretto adapted from Kindred by Octavia Butler with composer Billy Childs. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.

Jobs With Justice (PM Press)     Save Our Unions (Monthly Review Press) Meet Steve Early, author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress and Rand Wilson, union organizer and longtime Jobs With Justice activist.

Scarecrone (Publishing Genius Press) E! Entertainment (Wonder Press) In Scarecrone, Melissa Broder deepens her self-aware and dark brand of poetry, which The Chicago Tribune says “risks the divine” and Flavorwire calls “unbelievable and overwhelming for its imaginative power alone.” Publishers Weekly says her work is "as funny and hip as it is disturbing." The full-length version of Kate Durbin’s E! Entertainment sparkles with the static of TV personalities, the privileged dramas of MTV’s The Hills and Bravo’s Real Housewives, the public tragedies of Amanda Knox and Anna Nicole Smith.Kate Durbin traces the migratory patterns of the flightiest members of our televised demimonde, from the vacant bedrooms of the Playboy Mansion to the modern gothic set of Kim Kardashian’s fairytale wedding, rendering a fabulous, fallen world in a language of diamond-studded lavishness. A recent transplant from Brooklyn, Melissa Broder now lives in Los Angeles, CA where she continues her work as assistant director of publicity and social media at Penguin Random House. Broder's poems appear or are forthcoming in Guernica, Fence, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, et al. Her previous books are Meat Heart and When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother. Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles based writer and artist. She is the author of The Ravenous Audience (Akashic), and co-author of Abra, an artist’s book and interactive iPad app created with the help of a NEA grant from Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago. Durbin is founding editor of the online pop cultural criticism journal, Gaga Stigmata; her tumblr project, Women as Objects, archives the teen girl tumblr aesthetic. 

Creative Block (Chronicle Books) Creative block presents the most crippling--and unfortunately universal--challenge for artists. No longer! This chunky blockbuster of a book is chock-full of solutions for overcoming all manner of artistic impediment. The blogger behind The Jealous Curator, Danielle Krysa interviews 50 successful international artists working in different mediums and mines their insights on how to conquer self-doubt, stay motivated, and get new ideas to flow. Each artist offers a tried-and-true exercise--from road trips to 30-day challenges to cataloging the medicine cabinet-- that will kick-start the creative process. Abundantly visual with more than 300 images showcasing these artists' resulting work, Creative Block is a vital ally to students, artists, and creative professionals. For today's panel, Danielle Krysa will be joined by Stephanie Vovas (Photography) and Jenny Hart (Contemporary embroidery/drawing) Danielle Krysa is the artist/curator behind The Jealous Curator, an art blog that celebrates the work of contemporary artists. Along with writing a daily post on her own site, Danielle has also written guest posts for West Elm, Style by Emily Henderson, Etsy, and many other blogs. She is a regular contributor to SFGirlByBay.com, and has written articles for Frankie Magazine, and Anthology Magazine. All of this writing has recently lead to Danielle becoming a published author - in February of 2014 her first book, Creative Block, was released by Chronicle Books. A second book, focused on contemporary collage, will be published in the fall of 2014. Danielle lives in British Columbia, Canada. www.thejealouscurator.com Stephanie Vovas is a fine art and editorial photographer. Her favorite thing to do is photograph people. She has won numerous awards including American Photography 29, Prix de la Photographie Paris, and the International Photography Awards. Her work has been published in Treats! Magazine, Playboy, Rooms and PDN. Her photography is held in many private collections and has been exhibited in several solo and group shows. She lives in Los Angeles with her fiancé Tom, and their dog Toadie. Jenny Hart founded Sublime Stitching in 2001 as a new model for embroidery design and resources. She first began working in hand embroidery in the summer of 2000, creating portraits of the famous and infamous. Recognizing a need to update and expand embroidery design commercially led to the launch of Sublime Stitching a year later. Since then, Jenny has become an internationally recognized fine artist and designer with works appearing in Vogue, Nylon, Lucky, Rolling Stone, The Face, Juxtapoz, The New York Times Magazine and others. She is an award-winning author of seven titles on embroidery for Chronicle Books, and her drawings and works in embroidery have been exhibited and published internationally. In 2012, Hart's embroidered work "La Llorona" became a part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Jenny lives in Los Angeles, California.

For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey (Beacon Press) For All of Us, One Today is a fluid, poetic story anchored by Richard Blanco's experiences as the inaugural poet in 2013, and beyond. In this brief and evocative narrative, he shares for the first time his journey as a Latino immigrant and openly gay man discovering a new, emotional understanding of what it means to be an American. He tells the story of the call from the White House committee and all the exhilaration and upheaval of the days that followed. He reveals the inspiration and challenges behind the creation of the inaugural poem, "One Today," as well as two other poems commissioned for the occasion ("Mother Country" and "What We Know of Country"), published here for the first time ever, alongside translations of all three of those poems into his native Spanish. Finally, Richard Blanco reflects on his life-changing role as a public voice since the inauguration, his spiritual embrace of Americans everywhere, and his vision for poetry's new role in our nation's consciousness. Like the inaugural poem itself, "For All of Us, One Today" speaks to what makes this country and its people great, marking a historic moment of hope and promise in our evolving American landscape.